Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking on the possible resettlement of the Chagos Islands; which departments are conducting this work; and whether they will publish any further conclusions they reach on the feasibility and costs of resettlement by those exiles and their descendants who wish to return.

I refer the noble Lord to the Written Ministerial Statement of 24 March 2015 made by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (James Duddridge), which I repeated the same day in the House of Lords, (HLWS440).

Further work building on the independent KPMG Feasibility Study is now underway to seek to clarify fundamental uncertainties around the likely costs, ongoing liabilities and potential demand for resettlement. This is being led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in close collaboration with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, and we will explain our conclusions to interested parties in due course.